Designing the Future: An Agency Owner's Guide to Financial Planning for 2026
- Thomas Capra
- Sep 9
- 6 min read
2026 isn’t about bigger budgets. It’s about smarter plans. Here’s how marketing agencies can get intentional this year.
First off, let’s state the obvious here: nobody likes the word budget. Just saying this word can be a buzzkill to all the ambition, excitement and motivation that you and your team have built up while envisioning your successes for the year ahead. It can make a very necessary process become a very painful one, as the word can create attitudes (both real and perceived) that are rigid, restrictive, controlling and inflexible – all of which risk harming the incredible growth culture you’ve built at your company.
However, the word budget isn’t disappearing from most organizations' vocabulary anytime soon (I still use it often!). The opportunity lies in how we frame it. We can reshape the way our teams interpret the word — treating it not as a rigid cost-control exercise, but as a flexible plan for growth. Or, if the word itself still feels too heavy for your organization's culture, simply call it what it truly is: your annual financial plan. Because that’s what this is about. Planning for your agency’s growth, profitability, and impact (and don’t forget sanity!) in 2026.
So, let’s dive in – here are six things to keep in mind when developing your 2026 financial plan that also hopefully will keep you from falling asleep at the spreadsheets.
(And yes, I guess this is technically a plan for building a plan 😄)
1: Why Making an Annual Financial Plan is So Critically Important
We’ve all heard the guiding principle (or productivity mantra, or whatever you want to call it) “work smarter, not harder”. But we all know success takes both – and usually, a lot of both. When I specifically think of ways to “work smarter”, there are so many tactical approaches that come to mind: prioritization, automation, etc. But the most critical of them all is having a plan.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”. If you have ambitious goals for 2026 that will take a lot of hard work by you and your team, rigorous preparation is an absolute must to achieving them in a smarter way.
An annual plan gives you a roadmap: where you want to go, how fast you want to get there, and whether you’ll need snacks (aka cash) along the way. It’s not about predicting the future perfectly. It’s about being intentional and prepared so you’re not constantly reacting to surprises.
2: Be Aligned with your Strategic Goals
Your plan shouldn’t just be a stack of numbers—it should directly contribute to and support your strategy. If your 2026 goals are to expand into new markets, launch new service lines, or finally fix that “Frankenstack” of tools, your plan should reflect that.
Here’s the kicker: your entire team needs to very clearly know, understand, and have frequent reinforcement of, what your 2026 goals are. Otherwise, your “strategic vision” is just a nice slide in an all-hands meeting that nobody remembers. The best plans are the ones where every department head knows how their piece connects to the big picture.
3: Start with a Firm Foundation – This Year’s Updated Forecast
Before you start drawing up your 2026 empire, get real about how 2025 is shaping up. That means updating your forecast for the rest of this year.
Think of it like building a house—you wouldn’t start without checking if the foundation is solid. If Q4 2025 is looking slower than expected, or client churn is picking up, those realities need to inform what you take on in 2026.
4: Use Both the “Top-Down” and “Bottoms-Up” Approaches
This is where the magic happens.
Top-down: The CEO and CFO (or you, with your best “finance hat” on) set the high-level guardrails: key priorities, revenue targets, productivity expectations, and profitability thresholds. It’s the “mission from HQ.”
And let’s just pause here for a second and appreciate the term, “guardrails”. Remember how I mentioned earlier that what we don’t want are rigid and controlling attitudes during this process? Well, the concept of using “guardrails” from top leadership is a critical approach in this regard, as it:
Encourages freedom within boundaries
Supports success, not punishment
Builds trust within teams
Adapts as conditions change
Keeps focus on the big picture
Feels collaborative, not controlling
Bottoms-up: Each department leader (e.g., Sales, Operations, HR, Finance, etc.) comes to the table with their own plan based on their deep expertise and experience in the areas they oversee. They lay out what they need in 2026, including:
People: People are the largest cost driver in an agency. Departments must budget for current team needs and anticipated growth (utilization and billability are tied to this).
Software & Tools: Tools are enablers of efficiency and quality. Every department has core systems they rely on to deliver work, and these may need upgrades or replacing/consolidating.
Professional Services & Outsourcing: Agencies often flex capacity through outsourcing. This category ensures coverage for overflow work or specialized expertise.
Operating Expenses (Department-Specific Opex): These keep the department functioning day-to-day and support collaboration, productivity, and client delivery.
This bottoms-up build process turns your plan from a wish list into a business case.
The next step is merging these two together, and it is typically handled by finance by comparing the bottoms-up asks to the top-down guardrails, leading negotiation conversations, and finalizing a well-balanced plan that reflects leadership’s strategic ambition and department leaders’ operational reality.
5: Don’t Just Build a Spreadsheet — Build a Playbook
If your 2026 "plan" is just an Excel sheet of numbers, you’re missing the point. A true plan is a Playbook — something that combines financial targets and the context behind them.
Your Playbook should include:
Financial KPIs (revenue, gross margin, EBITDA — the usual suspects).
Non-financial KPIs (client satisfaction, employee retention, utilization %, campaign performance).
Strategic priorities (launching new services, expanding markets, key partnerships).
Risks & opportunities (R&O) preparedness schedules (the “what ifs” that could potentially derail or accelerate your year, but not quite likely enough to officially include in your plan. Think: What if our largest client leaves? What if a new service line gains traction faster than expected).
Qualitative insights (the story behind the numbers. Where do you see momentum? What lessons did 2025 teach you?).
The goal? A Playbook that tells the story of how your agency will grow — not just the math behind it. That way, your leaders don’t just get numbers on a page - they get a framework to actually win the game.
6: Don’t Forget Cash Flow Planning
Here’s the trap many agencies fall into: you build a beautiful P&L plan that shows profit in December, only to discover earlier in March that you’re scrambling to cover payroll. Why? Because profit does not equal cash.
Annual planning isn’t just about revenue and expenses. You’ve got to layer in cash flow forecasting:
Client payment terms (that big enterprise client might pay you in 60 days… if you’re lucky).
Client pass-through media/vendor costs (your Facebook Ads bill is due even if your client hasn’t paid yet).
Timing of new hires, bonuses, and contractor payments.
One-off investments (tools, tech, office, rebrand).
A rolling 13-week cash flow forecast alongside your annual plan is like night-vision goggles— it lets you see liquidity issues before they sneak up on you. And trust me, “surprised by cash” is not a good surprise.
Final Thoughts
Your 2026 plan (or "budget" 😄) doesn’t need to be a 50-tab Excel monster. But it does need to be thoughtful, aligned with strategy, embraced by your team, and flexible enough to handle the curveballs that are guaranteed to come.
And hey, I’m not going to sugar-coat this annual financial planning process as being without its potential hiccups, glitches, politics, pushback, disconnects, breakdowns, finger-pointing, tension, snags, fire drills, and occasional splashes of drama. But the great news is, using this enabling, yet disciplined, approach will help the annual planning season go a heck of a lot smoother and bring you greater confidence and clarity as we approach 2026.
At the end of the day, the numbers - and especially the stories behind them - should be an empowering game plan to help you win (and help reduce the number of unwanted surprises along the way). If you don’t feel like this is the case for your agency, shoot me a message – I’m more than happy to provide some additional perspective and guidance.
Now, get out there and do some extraordinary things.
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